These Lifeless Things is a novella published as part of the new Solaris Satellites series.
Fifty years ago, ninety-nine per cent of our species died during "the Setback". It lasted three years, and yet no one is sure what it was, even those who survived. Or at least no one believes what they have to say. Until a student on a field trip to an abandoned Ukrainian city discovers an old poetry book that might change everything: Eva, a woman who survived the initial disaster, kept a journal in its generous margins.
That brings the reader quickly to this book's one big flaw: while Eva's journal entries give us a fascinating insight into a world turned upside-down, of what it's like to be walled into a city with an implacable and unknowable enemy, they are presented entirely in italics, and they amount to sixty per cent of the book. It's a very odd decision, and one not made with accessibility in mind.
That aside, it's a very good book, a successful combination of horror and science fiction that gives us trees with eyes and utterly incomprehensible alien intelligences. Readers might see echoes of Doctor Who villains like the Ogri or the Weeping Angels in its stony antagonists and their flickering movements, but the alien (or other-dimensional) encounters in this book are chilling in their own specific ways.
There are also moments of humour (Eva tells us that instead of resembling the cast of Mad Max, everyone looks like extras from Fiddler on the Roof), romance (a love likely to be unrequited held tight as a totem against the darkness) and betrayal (some humans are agents for the enemy, while others hunt for such agents and don't care too much if their accusations are unfounded).
In The Wailing Asteroid, Murray Leinster wrote that "if we ever have to face a superior race, we will die of it". Eva theorises that a shock like this is why ten million humans died in the first five minutes of the Setback, that even though "we bought the science fiction books … we simply did not imagine it". It was fascinating, albeit alarming, to read a book about our species hitting such a choke-point. Stephen Theaker ****
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